


Meltdown

by BlueNeutrino



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Gen, Horror, Mental Institutions, Psychological Horror, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 00:09:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 20,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6632818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNeutrino/pseuds/BlueNeutrino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's in the psych ward, plagued by visions of Lucifer forcing him to hallucinate the world turning upside down, arms reaching for him out of the walls, eyes in the ceiling and monstrous creatures hunting him through the abandoned halls of the hospital. But Sam can handle it. After all, he knows it's all in his head…right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wake Up Mr. Insane

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-post from fanfiction.net. This is inspired by the full conversion mod "White Night" for the game "Amnesia: The Dark Descent" which, despite being made using the Amnesia engine, is actually a very different game and a very well made mod (once you get past the bad voice acting) and you don't need to have played it or know anything about it to follow this story. Set during season 7 while Sam is in the psych ward but Cas isn't yet back.

"Rise and shine, Sammy!"

The roaring voice cut into his hazy consciousness like a baseball hitting a pillow, sending feathers flying everywhere like his thoughts that were scattered into disarray. Sam groaned and opened his eyes blearily, struggling to wake and wishing he could sink back into the blissful blankness of sleep that he felt like he'd been missing for eternity. How was it he even managed to sleep in the first place? That wasn't something he'd found easy for a long time, and actual _peaceful_ sleep was as good as impossible…

He didn't have time to collect his thoughts before they were invaded once again. "Come on, Sam, you're no fun when you're asleep. Now, get up! You won't believe what you've missed."

Groggily, Sam sat himself up against the metal frame of the hospital bed and shot a glare at the ever-present hallucination by his side, but didn't actually retaliate. That was only what it wanted.

Lucifer rolled his eyes and huffed childishly. "Really, Sam, you wanna take a look round. There was all sorts going on while you were off in snooze-land. Best get a good look at your surroundings and remember where all the important stuff is now, because you'll need that when it gets dark."

Sam didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and, as usual, tried to ignore him. He was too exhausted to play along with this, and the more attention he afforded the illusion, the more he felt his mind breaking down. It would only get better if he succeeded in tuning Lucifer out, like he used to be able to, but that was growing harder by the day.

His silence, of course, didn't shut the hallucination up. "Sammy, listen to me. I'm trying to help you out here. Get up and look round. There's important stuff you're missing."

Finding him increasingly difficult to ignore, Sam finally snapped back. "Look, I'm not listening to you because you're not real, okay? Nothing you say is real. Now just shut up because there's gonna be doctors here soon with medication and then I'm going back to sleep."

Lucifer just laughed at him, clearly not at all deterred by Sam's hostility. "That stuff never works, Sam. You know it doesn't. And it doesn't matter anyway because no doctors are going to be coming with medication."

Sam was still refusing to look at him, knowing that he was only trying to screw with his head even more than it had already been fucked over, but Lucifer leaned closer to whisper in his ear with a sneer. "You want to know why that is, Sam? Because _nobody's here._ "

That didn't get a reaction, and looking annoyed, Lucifer wandered over to stand by the door. "You don't believe me, Sam? Fine. Then why don't you get up and check for yourself? You're the only one left."

Still nothing.

"Or are you just going to be a stubborn brat and stay in bed all day?"

That got a vague eye-flicker.

Lucifer gave a triumphant grin and punched the air, taking that as a sign of success. "Knew you were listening, Sammy. Now I mean it. You have to get up and find a way out of here, before they get to you too."

Sam's bloodshot eyes narrowed at him. He was used to Lucifer's constant torments, but the hallucination had never tried anything like this before. Its commands now seemed oddly specific, and Sam was confused as to why the angel seemed to want him to get up so urgently. Normally there was just lots of random shouting and hallucinations that ensured he never got a moment of peace, but today the angel seemed to be trying a different tack. Unless Sam's brain chemistry had drastically altered, he wasn't sure why something that only existed in his head would start behaving like this. Then again, he hadn't yet worked out how he'd managed to get to sleep in the first place, or even really remember what had been going on last night before he'd gone to bed.

His curiosity piqued enough to at least have a quick look out into the corridor, Sam swung his legs off the bed and got up stiffly, resolutely not looking in Lucifer's direction as he walked towards the door. The angel was probably leering at him, but Sam heard nothing more from him as he opened the door and peered out. He didn't see anyone in the corridor, but that didn't mean he was the only one left on the ward by any means.

Part of him was still tempted to just go and climb back into bed, tired as he was, but he knew that with Lucifer pestering him, there'd be no chance of getting any actual rest now. Deciding it couldn't hurt just to have a quick look around for someone else and confirm it for sure, Sam took a hesitant step outside into the corridor, but then Lucifer piped up again from behind him. "See? What did I tell you?"

"Shut up," Sam growled, taking a few paces down the corridor and not looking back. He came to the next door along, recalling that it belonged to a schizophrenic girl he'd managed to have a coherent conversation with a couple of times. He tried the door, unsure as to whether it would be locked or not, but finding that it wasn't he pushed it open slowly, trying not to disturb her if she was inside. However, as Sam got the door fully open without hearing a thing from within the room, he was surprised to see there was nobody there. Even odder, the mattress has been lifted from the bed and now lay on the floor several feet away with the sheets flung messily over it. Sam frowned, a little confused, and Lucifer chuckled.

"Believe me yet, Sam?"

Sam was beginning to think that maybe he did - or at least he believed that _something_ was wrong - but he still didn't want Lucifer to have the satisfaction of seeing how unsettled he was. He stormed past the hallucination and back out into the corridor, trying the next room along. That one was empty too. Very confused and worried now, Sam half-ran down the hallway, looking to see if there was a nurse or janitor or anyone _anywhere,_ but saw nothing.

Panic was starting to settle in when he heard Lucifer remark calmly behind him again. "I told you, you're the only one here."

Angrily, and with his tiredness overridden by worry, Sam rounded on him. "Alright, now what's going on?" he snapped. "Am I even awake? Or is this just another way for you to torment me in my sleep?"

Lucifer shrugged nonchalantly. "Maybe, but do you really want to take that risk, Sam? Now do as I say. You need to find a flashlight."

None of this was starting to make any more sense to Sam. "Why? It's not even dark."

"It will be," Lucifer answered, a sense of urgency in his tone, "And the way out of here isn't easy. Now check in one of the doctor's offices. There should be a flashlight and batteries in a desk drawer somewhere."

Unnerved, Sam flashed him a distrusting look, but decided it might be best to actually follow his advice for once. He didn't like this situation one bit, and it especially frustrated him that he couldn't tell whether any of this was real or not. And if it _was_ real, then what happened to cause it?

He thought he ought to get to a phone and call Dean, and decided to follow Lucifer's instructions and head to the nearest office. Walking briskly, Sam rounded a corner to where he knew Dr. Manners' office to be, but as he did so stopped dead, his eyes falling on a huge dripping patch of blood spatter on the wall. A gasp of shock escaped him at the sight, and he felt a ripple of fear.

"Okay, tell me what's going on here?" he demanded of the imaginary angel, "What happened?"

There was no answer.

Turning round to look for the ever-present Lucifer, Sam's eyes fell on empty space. "What…?" he muttered to himself, taking a few steps back in the direction he came from and glancing round furiously, but there was no-one there. "Lucifer?" He couldn't believe he was actually calling out for the angel, but he needed someone to tell him what happened here. For weeks he'd been plagued by the hallucination of his tormentor in Hell refusing to leave him alone, but now at last that it was gone, oddly, relief was the last thing that Sam felt. Something very wrong was going on here, and Sam still thought he'd prefer to have the Devil in his head than have to face it completely alone.

He started to run down the corridor, wanting to reach the exits although he was disoriented as to where they were, but just as he came up on a corner he stopped suddenly, taking a few brisk paces back and breathing sharply. A chill ran down his spine as he heard the noise coming from round the corner; that of guttural, inhuman groan.


	2. Cracks

Momentarily, Sam froze. His weary muscles tensed up as he prepared himself to either fight or run. _There's something here. Something supernatural._ Well, of course there was. That was kind of his trademark. If he wasn't the one hunting down evil creatures, then they'd come to him.

What it was this time, he wasn't sure - that animalesque noise ruled out a lot of things, but none of the monsters in his memory matched what he'd just heard. Maybe it was something new then, but whatever it was, Sam didn't much want to have to fight it. He had no weapons, no knowledge of what he was fighting, and he was tired. So tired. The weeks spent fighting off hallucinations of the Devil every time he tried to sleep had taken their toll on him.

He was so exhausted that running and hiding really seemed like the most appealing option right now, but if this was some supernatural creature, he knew it was going to be down to him to do something about it. Getting a look at whatever it was might help with that.

Moving slowly, Sam crept towards the wall and began to inch along it, creeping closer to the corner where this corridor met the next. Just a quick glimpse round was all he was going for, and get a clearer of idea of what he was dealing with. It would do no good to try to fight, especially when the only thing he was armed with was his fists. A quick look, and then find a phone and call Dean: that was the plan. Assuming, of course, that all this was actually happening and wasn't just in his head.

Sam stopped as he reached the edge of the wall and took a breath before he tried to look round it. At the back of his mind, there was a nagging question of how some kind of creature had managed to make everyone in the hospital bar him vanish and how had Dean not already found out, but he forced that thought to the side as he tried to deal with the situation at hand. Sam's head inched slowly out past the corner as his eyes peered out in front of him and fell on...

...absolutely nothing.

It took him a few moments to be sure of that as he stared down the empty hallway, and then, still seeing nothing in the long corridor fully illuminated by the panel lights in the ceiling, he let out the breath he'd been holding. That didn't exactly put him at ease, but he stepped out into the middle of the hallway as he continued to look round with an uneasy frown on his face. He was sure he'd heard something growl, but literally only seconds had passed and there had been no footsteps or the sound of doors opening or closing. So where was it?

"Okay, this is getting weirder," Sam muttered to himself. The whole situation had a strange sense of unreality about it. Maybe it wasn't real? Perhaps he'd just imagined everything, including the noise. It didn't exactly seem unlikely, but there was definitely something very _wrong_ here. There was a blood spatter down the corridor and a ton of missing persons to remind him that the safest option would be to assume that this was actually happening. Whatever he did next, he was going to have to be cautious.

As Sam stood trying to figure out what was going on, another sound reached his ears. It sounded like running water, as if someone was taking a shower, and it was coming from somewhere down the corridor behind him. Even more confused and unnerved by the noise, he slowly turned round to look in its general direction. The hallway before him was bathed in an unnatural yellow glow from the strip lighting overhead, but was quite clearly empty.

 _Dammit, I am going to get some answers, whatever it takes._ He hadn't abandoned his decision to approach things with caution, but this new development had furthered his frustration that he couldn't figure out what the hell was happening. The source of that noise was at least one thing he intended to find out.

Purposefully, Sam began to walk along the corridor, although his stride slowed a second later as he realised that trying to remain quiet might be a good idea. His hospital slippers didn't make much noise on the linoleum underfoot, but he still made a point of treading lightly to avoid attracting the attention of whatever may be out there.

Sam passed several closed doors until he finally homed in on the source of the sound, which appeared to be coming from behind the only door on the corridor that was stood slightly ajar. Of course that wasn't ominous at all.

It was slightly tempting to not open it and just go and resume his search for a phone, but he was here now, and if he chickened out Dean would never let him live it down. Tentatively, Sam approached the door and placed a hand upon the metal, pushing gently so that the narrow band of light shining through the crack expanded to reveal the whole room. The space beyond appeared to be a shower block - unsurprising given the nature of the noise - and at first glance seemed thankfully empty. However, an even deeper sense of unease began to eat away at Sam as his gaze fell upon the room. He was sure there hadn't been a shower block like this in this part of the ward before. Or maybe there was. His brain was so fried he couldn't really remember.

Sam took another step forward to enter the bathroom, feeling the cold from the ceramic floor beneath him seep through his slippers. Glancing about, the room seemed a lot grimier than he remembered the showers in this place being. Limescale was coating the pipework and mold was creeping up the walls and into the cracks of flaky yellow grout between the tiles. It seemed like this place hadn't been cleaned in months. Which was odd, Sam thought, although so was pretty much everything else about this situation.

As Sam walked further inside, the first few stalls he encountered were all dry; the shower heads encrusted with limescale and the water most definitely not running. It wasn't until he reached the final stall on the right that he found the source of the noise, but the sight he saw there made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The water streaming from the shower head was crimson in colour, forming a little whirlpool of red as it gathered on the floor below before reaching the drain. It wasn't flowing away fast enough to stop lines of what was clearly blood flooding the cracks in the ceramic underneath.

Sam grimaced at the sight. He was by no means squeamish, but the sheer volume of blood pouring down sickened him, and it was both horrifying and frightening to imagine where it was coming from. He almost wanted to go to the valve in the wall and just shut the flow off so he wouldn't have to watch it any longer, but there was no way to do that without becoming drenched in the bloodied water.

Sam had been staring at the macabre view for a mere two seconds before, for the third time that day, he heard a sudden sound from something he couldn't see. Except this time, its source was unmistakable. The door to the room had just slammed.


	3. Tight Spaces

Sam felt a sudden rush of panic as the sound echoed of the walls, the sinister noise an all too clear sign of danger. Heart racing, he abandoned the bleeding shower head and rushed to the door, feeling a sudden desire to just get the hell out of here. _Please don't be locked please don't be locked._ But as he reached the door and pulled at it desperately, it didn't budge. "Well, I don't know what I was expecting," he muttered, fear giving his words an edge of panic as he spoke to the empty room. Then, angry with himself for letting the situation get to him, he gave the door a futile kick. "Dammit!"

The impact hurt his toes through the insubstantial footwear he had on, but the pain gave the situation a stimulating air of realness that up until now had been lacking. Forcing himself to calm down, Sam tried to think. Now how did he get out? And what could it have been that had slammed the door and caused it to suddenly lock? Especially when the entire place seemed deserted and the door didn't even _have_ a lock that Sam could see. It almost didn't seem physically possible, like there was no way this could be occurring except inside his head, yet the walls and door were now providing a very solid barrier to stop him escaping.

In the background, the bloody shower was still running.

Unable to take it any longer, Sam marched back to the stall with the intention of turning it off. He couldn't stop the red liquid soaking his feet as he stepped into it or the scarlet spray that drenched the front of his white scrubs, but he avoided it as best he could as he reached round to shut off the valve.

For a moment there was a calming quiet as the red water stopped running, but then a creaking noise sounded from somewhere in the pipes, and a second later Sam heard a rush of water again as another shower started up. _The plumbing in this place is seriously fucked_ he thought as he went to see which one it was.

It turned out that it was the shower two stalls down on the opposite side of the room, and Sam was relieved to see the water was flowing blessedly clear. He crossed to it, and not caring much about how wet he got, tried to rinse as much of the blood away as possible. He needed to figure out a way to get out of here, but the hot water was helping clear his head as well as waking him up. Once he was as clean as he could get, he shut the shower off at the valve and readied himself to think of a plan.

However, it was barely two seconds before there was more creaking in the pipework and another shower started up, this time in the stall directly opposite. Sam glared at it. "You have got to be kidding me."

What was wrong with this place? Whatever it was, he didn't like it at all.

Sam considered just trying to ignore the rush of water and concentrating on finding a way out of here, but the constant noise was starting to grate on his sanity in a less intense but similar way to Lucifer's persistent torments over the past few months. With the hallucination seemingly having decided to leave him be, Sam wanted to be able to be able to think clearly again. He wanted silence, and maybe then he could finally concentrate and figure this whole crazy situation out.

He crossed over to the shower opposite and turned it off, not really caring how wet he was getting now since he had bigger things to worry about. As the by now familiar creaking sound resonated in the pipes he almost sighed wearily, but then there came a loud crashing noise from somewhere behind him that he hadn't been expecting.

Tensing up again, Sam spun round to see what it was. He calmed a little as he saw that there was still nothing there, but it appeared that an extraction vent in the far corner of the room had just fallen open with a loud metallic clang. For a couple of moments he stood staring up at it suspiciously, before hesitantly walking towards it to get a better look. That had been strange.

He hadn't even noticed there was a vent in this part of the room before, but he hadn't exactly been paying much attention, preoccupied as he was with the blood. Now though, it seemed to be offering him a solution to the question of how to get out of here. As Sam gazed up he couldn't see much beyond the dark hole that had opened up in the ceiling, but the vent seemed just large enough to accommodate him and there were pipes running up the wall he could climb up. At first glance it seemed to be a potential - and possibly only - means of escape, but what worried him was what he might find beyond.

That had almost seemed a little too convenient. It was as if the sequence of self-activating showers had been a puzzle for him to solve, and the reward was a way for him to get out of here. But this still felt like a trap, as if someone was toying with him, and Sam thought he knew who that might be. Everything pointed to this being an illusion created by Lucifer after all.

As he decided that, Sam clenched his jaw in anger at what was happening to him, and in frustration at himself for still being so uncertain. What was he meant to do if this _was_ all just part of the Devil's game? What if finally things had gotten so bad he was in a coma and now he was living inside his nightmares? The thought terrified him, but he forced himself to stay calm. If none of this was real, then he could survive it. He couldn't die here. Everything here only existed in his head.

It wasn't convincing enough just to think it, so he clasped his hands together in front of him and dug his thumb sharply into his left palm, vainly trying to reignite pain in an old scar to drag himself back to reality. He hadn't really expected it to work, but there was still a faint spark of naive hope inside him that had believed it would be enough, and soon he'd be groggily awakening in his hospital bed and Dean would be right beside him. But as he found himself still stuck solidly inside the bathroom, acceptance gradually settled on him that it wouldn't be that easy. Well, now he thought he only had one real choice to get out of this. If this was Lucifer's game, then it would take more than this to defeat Sam Winchester. He was going to play it through to the end, and he was going to play to win. Then he was going to wake up, whether the Devil liked it or not.

With a renewed sense of purposeful determination, Sam stepped forward to grasp the pipes in the wall and haul himself up towards the vent. Fear was still very much present in his mind, but as his fingers curled over the edge of the gap he knew it was either face whatever may be up here or stay trapped down there. Slowly, he crawled inside, finding the space beyond a very tight fit for his large frame and leaving him little room to manoeuvre. In the cramped space it felt like there was barely enough room him to breathe, which only caused him to start breathing faster as he gulped down what little air there seemed to be.

Tilting his neck painfully to look up ahead and trying not to panic, Sam peered down the narrow passageway stretching before him, and was relieved to see some light streaming in from somewhere on the left a few metres away in the darkness. The sight gave him enough reassurance to help steady his breathing before he began his agonising journey along the ventilation shaft. His aching muscles wanted nothing more than to just give up and rest, but he forced himself onwards in painful, miniscule movements as he crawled through the narrow space. It seemed like an age before he reached the spot where the light was shining in, but eventually he did. Stopping and trying to hold himself still in a rather uncomfortable position, Sam twisted his head to look towards the source of the light. There was a branch off from the main passage extending a couple of metres or so, before terminating in a grill in the floor through which rays of light were shining up. Just before the vent opened into the room below, Sam could make out a long drop downwards that was pitch dark, and he had no way of determining how deep it was or what it led to. That was something he didn't much want to find out, but he did plan on somehow manoeuvring himself towards the grill and reaching the room underneath, desperate to get out of this claustrophobic space as soon as possible. The bottom of the shaft seemed to be lower on the other side of the drop than it was here, and Sam thought he'd probably have enough space to crouch and kick open the vent cover if only he could reach it.

Slowly and awkwardly, he tried to twist his body round to crawl in the direction of the light. Navigating the corner was painful. His hips got caught on the sharp edge several times, the metal painfully digging into his skin, and his shins didn't seem to want to fit as he tried to move them to orientate across the width of the passage. Throughout the ordeal he found himself wishing for once that he wasn't quite so tall or so broad, but at length it the worst of it was over, and he began to creep forward again. Upon reaching the part where the shaft went into a vertical decline, he realised how he actually was still grateful for his long arms as he reached across to pull himself over, managing to traverse the narrow aperture without slipping down it.

In the slightly taller space Sam was now crouching on top of the vent cover, and for a moment he worried that there would be something awful in the room below him and he would have to go back. However, as he looked down through the grill it simply appeared to be a patient bedroom, the metal cot below him still having its mattress in place unlike the one he'd seen earlier. There wasn't much else in the room he could make out from this angle, but he'd decided it was good enough that he would try and get down there, desperate to get out of this tight space.

He wasn't exactly sure what the best way to get the vent cover open would be, but the first thing he tried was to simply stamp on it as best he could when he didn't have much room to flex his knees. To his pleasant surprise, that coupled with his weight seemed to be enough. A moment later he was tumbling through the open space, the metal grill swinging open and Sam dropping downwards to fall onto the bed. The thin mattress still didn't make for the most comfortable landing, but the open space and bright light was welcome following his experience in the vent.

Scrambling to his feet again, Sam looked about him to confirm that this was indeed a patient bedroom. It was a little smaller than the one he'd been in, but the clinical white sheets on the bed and the basic metal furniture made its function clear. The metal door to the room was shut (and hopefully not locked) but before that there was a simple desk and chair on the left of the room beside the bed. A lone scrap of paper was lying upon it, and curious as to what it may be, Sam crossed to the desk to get a better look.

As he saw what was scrawled upon it, he felt his heart skip a beat.

The handwriting was one he recognised. Sharp, unfussy, and slightly forward slanting; with straight long tails on letters that were rendered a little uneven due to the writer seemingly rushing. It was written in what looked like black ballpoint, but there were a couple of worrying flecks or red on the paper. Sam knew the handwriting all too well from the times he'd seen it in messages left for him on motel notepaper, but what chilled him most was the words it spelled out:

" _I'm sorry Sammy"_

Sam's breath caught in his throat as he stared at it, before picking up the note with trembling hands. "Sorry for what, Dean?" he whispered, forgetting that this wasn't supposed to be real as fear gripped him. How was Dean involved in this? What had happened to him?

He was so caught up in staring fixedly at the note that he almost jumped out of his skin at what happened next.


	4. The Devil You Know

"Why didn't you try to find a goddamn flashlight, Sam?!"

At the sudden sound of the voice yelling in his right ear, Sam started, almost tripping over the chair by the desk in surprise. Recovering quickly, he shot a glare at the man-shaped fallen angel beside him as he realised that Lucifer had made a comeback.

The hallucination gave him a reproachful glare in return, and then his eyes turned upwards and he raised his hands in mock apology. "Sorry, dad, didn't mean to take your name in vain. Well, actually I did, but Sammy…" He then turned his gaze back to Sam and looked at him in annoyance. "Why didn't you do what I told you to?" He looked weirdly like a pissed off parent scolding their child.

Sam didn't answer him. "Glad you've showed up again," he snarled sarcastically, "I was lost without you constantly yelling in my ear."

Lucifer huffed. "Well if you'd done what I told you instead of just running off wherever you felt like, maybe you would have avoided that unpleasant little trip through the ceiling. If I have to yell to get it through your thick skull then I will: I'm trying to help you. Do what I tell you and you might just make it out of this."

"Yeah?" Sam challenged, suddenly brandishing the note at him. "Then what's this? What have you done to Dean? What are you trying to make me _think_ you've done to Dean?"

Lucifer just shrugged. "I don't know. You're brother's not got anything to do with me."

"Quit pretending you aren't the one who's doing all this Lucifer, and just tell me what your game is." Sam had advanced closer to the angel and was towering over him, his tone angry as he tried to demand answers, but Lucifer just stared coolly back. Trying to intimidate the source of all evil on Earth who was only just an illusion in the first place was the most pointless thing Sam could have attempted.

"This has got nothing to do with me, Sam," he replied, sounding quite bored. "There's something else at work here, and I actually quite want you to survive it. It wouldn't be much fun if something else tried to take you away, so your choices are to listen to me, or face up to something worse on your own. Now which is it gonna be?"

 _It's a trick,_ Sam kept telling himself. _He's lying._ But it was hard to believe that with any certainty when he had so much to lose. Now Dean was involved (possibly, at least) and if Sam didn't try and doing something about all this then his brother was at risk too. Why or how the Devil was helping him, Sam didn't know, but nor did he think he could handle this on his own. Not in his current state.

Sam shook his head as he tried to think. "Then what's going on? How do you know what it is if it's got nothing to do with you?"

"Your subconscious has figured it out," came the casual reply, "And I'm just your subconscious finding a way of expressing it to you, if you wanna believe that. So you'd better listen to me when I tell you _you need to find a flashlight._ "

This still didn't make sense, but Sam decided to hedge his bets and play along. "Alright, fine," he agreed, "Where? And what am I gonna use it for when all the lights are still on?"

"That won't last," the angel replied darkly. "The power's gonna go soon. Why don't you try the desk drawer?"

He said the last sentence in a much brighter tone before stepping out of the way to let Sam reach the drawers, and Sam looked at him a little uncertainly before following his advice and opening the top one in the desk. It was almost empty except for, as predicted, a single flashlight, and next to it a couple of batteries rolled along the bottom of the drawer as Sam pulled it open. Before picking the items up he cast a glance at Lucifer, who was giving him an 'I told you so' look.

"Yeah okay, fine," Sam conceded reluctantly, checking that the flashlight was working before slipping the spare batteries into the still damp pockets of his trousers, along with the slightly scrunched up note. He was about to shut the drawer again when he noticed there was another item hidden away at the back, and he reached in to pick it up and examine it. It was a small steel key, the right size for any ordinary sized door, and had no label to indicate what it was meant to open. "What's this for then?" he asked Lucifer.

The only response he got was a shrug. "I don't know. You might want to hold onto it though. It could be useful."

Sam glared at him, wondering how the angel could somehow know exactly where to find the flashlight, but was being determinedly unhelpful when it came to explaining what the key was for. Not granting him a response, Sam slipped the key into his pocket too, agreeing that it probably would be useful later on.

He was about to try exiting the bedroom now, continuing his search for a way out of the strangely empty hospital, but just as he walked past the hallucination to try the door, Lucifer had something else to add. "Don't worry about drying out, Sam. There's going to be more water later on, and you won't like what's in it."

That sounded cryptically ominous, and Sam was about to express his annoyance at how vague and unhelpful the Devil was being, but as he glanced back round to tell Lucifer to either explain what he was talking about or just stop talking, it seemed that the illusion had vanished again. Sam wasn't sure if he was pleased about that or not.

He turned his attention back to the door and tried the handle, but it stiffly refused to move, not turning enough to get the door open. Sam was almost about to start panicking at being trapped in a locked room again, but then he remembered he had the key. He supposed it would make sense that it was for this room. He fished in his pocket for the metal device and then tried it in the door, relieved to find that it turned easily with a click. That appeared to have worked then. Although he'd already found its use, Sam then took the key from the lock and pocketed it again, considering the possibility that it would be a universal key for many of the doors in the hospital. If that was the case, he would almost definitely be needing it later.

Sam then re-tried the handle, this time relieved to find that it opened smoothly, and pushed the door cautiously open, wondering what would be on the other side. As the door swung open, it was revealed that beyond it there a hospital corridor, as Sam had expected, but he hadn't anticipated it being almost pitch black. The only light allowing him to identify the hall was that streaming in from the room behind him. "Okay then…" Sam muttered softly to himself, feeling fear begin to creep up his spine again. He wasn't afraid of the dark, but this was most definitely unnerving. It seemed that Lucifer had been right about him needing the flashlight.

Raising the flashlight in question and gripping it in his left hand, Sam switched it on and then shone the beam out into the darkness in front of him. It cast a small, dim circle of light into the darkest spaces of the hall, but it was better than nothing. Armed only with his faint light source, Sam cautiously took a step beyond the threshold of the door.

The moment that his foot hit the floor on the other side, a strange sensation came over him. It was almost as if he was weightless, feet glued to the ground while the rest of his body tried to rise up, and there was a whistling sound ringing in his ears. Panic quickly washed over him, and a moment later, his already darkened field of vision cut to absolute pitch black.


	5. Interlude I

_Air rushing past… It's blowing upwards at high speed, it seems, but he's going down…_

_Down…_

_Adam is beside him, falling in sync with him as they plummet. There's a faint circle of light above them, shrinking further the deeper they go._

_Dean's up there, he knows. Each inch he falls further feels like another fracture in his heart as he realises he'll never see his brother again. But Dean will be safe. The world he's in will be safe, and he'll be happy in time. It's worth it, to end it like this._

_He can still feel Lucifer inside of him. There's a strange, almost tangible sensation of the fallen angel's wings beating, trying to stop their fall, but he's weighed down by the flesh and blood of his human vessel._

_The light above has gone now; the ground closed, and the four beings have been swallowed up. He can feel the heat rising: the scorch of Hellfire hotter than anything burning at the core of the Earth as they descend towards it. It's unbearable, agonizing, impossible to live through…but he's already dead._

_Darkness and pain engulf him. Chains of invisible, relentless fire wind their way around his soul as he falls into the Cage, and the opening slams shut with a silent yet deafening finality. He feels the shockwave as he hits the bottom. His mouth opens to unleash a scream, and…_


	6. Crossing Doorways

Sam gasped, feeling as though he were breaking though the surface of an ocean as the world snapped back into focus. _What was that?_ He shook his head to clear it of the unwelcome flashback that had felt so vivid it was as though he was reliving it. It was as if stepping out into the corridor had been some kind of trigger, like passing through the physical doorway had opened up a door in his mind. Now he didn't know what else might come through, and whatever it might be, he wasn't sure he could hold it back. _Dammit,_ he thought to himself, angry that his own mind wouldn't do what he told it to. He couldn't let this place erode his sanity any more than it already had. If there was one thing he had to remain in control of, it was his own thoughts, and he couldn't let other things force their way in. _Focus,_ he told himself as he took a few deep, steady breaths. _Stay in the present, and find a way out._

With the flashlight raised, and the beam shaking just slightly more than it had been a moment ago, Sam stepped fully out into the corridor and continued on. His footsteps were just a faint shuffle, but it still sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet. The endless darkness and maze of identical corridors surrounding him were enough to chip away at the forced calm he had imposed on himself, but even as he felt his sense of fear and panic growing he progressed onwards. The flashlight beam fell on nothing but linoleum floors and plain white walls as he made his way through the ward, trying hard to remember where anything was and avoid accidentally going back on himself, but the longer it went on the more he became certain he wasn't even in the same ward anymore. Whatever this place was, he was sure it wasn't the hospital Dean had brought him to. It seemed like a rough copy, that lacked the kind of physical limitations or logical consistency of the real world he knew. It seemed to change around him, as if each corridor blinked out of existence and reconfigured itself somewhere else after he'd passed it, the hallways continuing on forever with no actual way out. It could be that this place existed on some alternate dimension created by some monster or demon wanting to toy with him. Or maybe it was all just a construct of his mind.

Just as Sam began to think the constant repetition of this place was unbearable and he despaired to think he may never find a way out, he rounded a corner to see a yellow rectangle of light up ahead of him. Relief washed over him as he saw that there was a room where the door was open and the power was still working, and lowering the flashlight he hurried more quickly towards it. He was halfway along the hallway when suddenly a chair appeared in view from the right of the doorway and flew across the room to hit the floor on the other side with a crash. Sam froze, his breath catching in his throat. _So there is something here._

He tentatively wondered if he should back away from the light and go in a different direction, but he was hesitant to move at all. Standing stone still, he listened, waiting to see if he could hear anything else from within the room or if something would appear in the doorway, but there was no further sound or movement. It was almost as if nothing was there, but chairs didn't just fling themselves across a room of their own accord. _So, what? It's a poltergeist then?_ That answer seemed much too simple for a world that didn't seem to make sense at all. After several seconds of standing waiting, he knew he was just going to have to press ahead anyway. If this was the only room with the lights still on, chances were this was the way he'd have to go.

He closed the rest of the distance to the doorway, pausing before finally stepping over it. He found himself wishing he had a weapon of some sort, but he was just going to have to do with nothing better than the flashlight as he peered inside to check there was nothing there. It came as a slight relief to see that there didn't appear to be anything in the room aside from furniture, although it added to his sense of unease.

The room appeared to be a storage space of some sort, filled with rows of filing cabinets and cupboards as well as chairs stacked on top of each other up against one wall. In one corner, a lone, old-fashioned computer sat on a desk, the chunky monitor projecting a forlorn bluescreen to the room. Sam crossed to it, hoping maybe he could get it working and find some information, but a quick glance at the smashed tower under the desk told him the hard drive was wrecked. Sighing, Sam quickly abandoned that idea, but there was a shelf above the desk filled with black binders and he instead went to pick one up, hoping that the contents might be able to tell him something. As he did so, a loose sheet of paper fluttered down from between the pages to land on the grubby keyboard below. Curious, he set the binder back down again and went to look at that instead. The top and left edges were smooth, but the coarse tears along the right and bottom of the paper clearly showed it had been ripped from something. As he saw what was written on it, he yet again felt a wave of fear as he realised that it was another note in Dean's handwriting:

" _I tried to stop all this happening and find a way to save you, but I guess I just wasn't good enough. There's got to be a way for me to make this right."_

Sam licked his dry lips. "What happened, Dean? What do you mean?" he muttered, feeling a combination of worry for his brother and frustration over not knowing what was going on. How even was it that Dean could be leaving notes for him here, scattered all over the place? Any possible answer to that was cause for worry. Hoping it might be able to tell him more, Sam flipped the note over to read what was on the other side. It appeared to be part of torn up patient record and his eyes scanned the incomplete text: " _John Doe admitted 02/13/11 at 0234h_ … _patient suffered severe blood loss…after four days has yet to regain consciousness…"_ From what he could make out it was just a generic piece of hospital documentation that Dean had found to write on, however that was possible. There didn't seem to be anything that helped explain his situation, but Sam folded the note anyway and shoved it into his pocket alongside the other one.

There were no doors in the storeroom that appeared to lead anywhere else, and with a sense of despair Sam realised he was going to have to go back the way he came. Going back out into the dark corridors wasn't exactly a pleasant thought, so he decided to make the most of having found the only lit room in the entire hospital and started to look around. There was a hook on one wall with a white coat like the kind doctors wore draped over it, and on the floor below it was a gray messenger bag. Sam glanced at those briefly before turning his attention to the rows of cupboards, and he tried the one nearest to him to find it was locked. He grunted in disappointment and then tried the one next to it, which opened only to reveal it was completely empty. That prompted a puzzled scowl. What was the point in a storage room if it wasn't going to be used to store anything? Although he wasn't sure why he was still trying to apply logic to this place.

The next cupboard along was the one that the mysterious flying chair had fallen in front of, and Sam kicked that out of the way to get to the door. It fortunately opened, and this time the cupboard itself was stocked full of contents: there were bottles of pills in assorted colors; disposable syringes labelled as shots of morphine and epinephrine; and more mundane items such as stationery, boxes of batteries and lightbulbs.

He was just surveying the items when he heard a voice by his ear again. "What have you found here, Sammy?"

No matter how many times that happened, Sam thought it would probably always make him jump. He started slightly before turning to glower at Lucifer. "Stuff that I'm pretty sure most hospitals have. Now what have you come to tell me?"

"That stuff looks pretty useful; you might want to take it with you."

 _That was an oddly helpful suggestion,_ Sam thought, which only made him suspicious. "Why? Want do you think is gonna happen?"

"I don't know, but you should always be prepared, Sam. Didn't your daddy ever teach you that?"

Sam shot him a glare at that remark, but it was actually sound advice. Not that he'd needed Lucifer to tell him. He went to pick up the messenger bag from the floor, knowing his pockets couldn't accommodate everything he needed, and slung it over his shoulder before beginning to empty some of the cupboard's contents into it. He stocked up on the packs of band-aids and epinephrine shots, hoping that was a precaution that would prove unnecessary, and then packed a few spare batteries for the flashlight.

"And the lightbulbs, Sam," Lucifer decided to add.

That earned him one of Sam's infamous bitchfaces. "Lightbulbs? Seriously? You keep telling me the power's going to go out and now you expect I'm gonna go round changing lightbulbs?"

"Just be a good little boy and pack them," the hallucination bitched back impatiently, "And the pills. They'll be more useful than you think."

"I don't even know what most of them are for."

"You don't know what most of them are for _yet._ You see those little orange ones at the front?" – he gestured to one of the pill bottles in front of Sam – "They're caffeine pills. You might be glad of those."

Sam scowled, but he did what he was told anyway, agreeing that the caffeine stimulants would be something he'd be grateful for if he wanted to stay awake long enough to get through this. Before dumping the bottle in the bag, he screwed the cap off and dry swallowed one, hoping it would help fight back the sense of tiredness that had already settled on him.

The final thing he collected from the cupboard was another key, a little larger than the one he already had, from a hook at the back of one of the shelves. "What do you think that's for?" Lucifer asked tauntingly in his ear.

Irritated, Sam deadpanned the reply. "I imagine it's the hall key," he said, holding up the label that was attached to it, which he knew full well the angel was aware of.

Lucifer gave a mocking laugh. "See, Sam? Just use your brain and I'm sure you'll get through this."

With everything of potential use salvaged from that cupboard, Sam swung the door shut and proceeded to the next one, wondering if perhaps there might be another key. The handle turned with a click, and then as the door swung open Sam found himself suddenly stumbling backwards as a heavy, human-shaped mass came tumbling out of the cupboard. The smell of it reached his nose in time for him to recognise it and leap out of the way, before the body fell to the floor. A curse escaped him and he backed away in shock, putting a hand to his mouth while Lucifer stood passively by. If anything, the Devil looked amused. "Well, that wasn't quite so nice as what was in the last one."

Sam shot him a disapproving glare, although he wasn't sure what he had expected. He took a few breaths to calm himself down, still shocked at having found a corpse stuffed into one of the cupboards. It wasn't as though he'd never seen a dead body before, although this one showing up now had really hammered home the seriousness of the situation. There was something very bad and very dangerous going on here, and the sooner he found a way out the better.

As Sam glanced down at the body he was relieved it wasn't someone he recognised, but he could see that it was a man who looked to be in his early forties with fair hair and was wearing a white lab coat. The corpse appeared to be pretty fresh, and the obvious cause of death was several deep gashes running across the man's back, staining his pristine white coat crimson. Slightly sickened, Sam glanced up at the hallucination standing beside him. "Ok, what did that?"

"Are you sure you want to know, Sam?"

Sam wasn't so sure that he did. "Look, just…tell me how to get out of here," he demanded of the angel, hating everything about this situation more with each passing second.

Lucifer smirked. "You get out the same way you came in: through the door."

Sam gritted his teeth in annoyance. "Yeah, real helpful," he growled sarcastically, but turned back towards the door anyway. He was keen to leave this room and the body behind even if it meant going back into the dark, but as he suddenly spun round to face the open doorway he froze again. The lights beyond it were now switched back on. That itself might have been a good thing, except for two issues: what was it that had turned them on? And Sam was certain that the hallway he was now facing was not the one he'd entered by. There were only a few feet of tiled floor beyond the doorway before the corridor opened up into a bigger room, that appeared to be some kind of canteen or communal area judging by the several tables surrounded by plastic chairs that Sam could see from his current vantage point. The strange feeling he'd had earlier that this place was reconfiguring itself when he wasn't looking seemed to be confirmed.

Sam turned to glance over at Lucifer again in scared confusion.

"That isn't the way I came earlier."

"No, but it's the way you're going," the angel replied cryptically.

That was far from reassuring, but since that doorway was the only entrance and exit to the room, Sam knew he didn't have much choice. Cautiously, he stepped out into the hallway again and walked through to the canteen area. Once he'd reached it, he could now see the only way onwards from there: on the far left of the room was a wall of metal bars running from floor to ceiling, much like the kind found in prisons, with a smaller door that opened in the middle and was secured with a sliding bolt. Beyond the bars he could see a panel light in the ceiling that was intermittently flickering, illuminating the space below in brief bursts. Sam crossed to it to get a better look, and as he reached the bars he saw that the gate marked the entrance to a stairwell that descended downwards into pitch darkness. The bolt on the door was secured with a padlock, but it was the only possible exit to the room.

"So, I guess I have to find a way to get down there?" Sam muttered to the hallucination beside him.

"Not unless you have any better ideas."

Ignoring the tone of that remark, Sam stood for a moment and stared down into the blackness below, wondering what might be down there even if he should manage to reach it. His thoughts weren't exactly pleasant, but it wasn't long before they were interrupted by the sound of yet another strange, inhuman growl.

At once on edge, Sam spun around quickly, fists clenched and adrenaline pumping. He couldn't see anything in the immediate room that had caused the noise, but the sound seemed strangely to have come from somewhere beyond the storage room that he'd entered by.

"It's that same old question," Lucifer remarked beside him. "Is it real? Are you just imagining it? Is anything actually there?"

The noise sounded again, closer this time, and Sam wondered if the storage room had somehow yet again been replaced with another hallway. He remained motionless for a moment longer, still trying to work out where exactly the sound was coming from, but then Lucifer sauntered over to whisper in his ear. "Let me give you a clue, Sammy: this one's real."

The words chilled him, but it was enough to prompt him out of his motionless stupor. _Right, time to do something._ He looked about him, wondering if he could smash a chair or pull the leg off one to use as a weapon, but he heard Lucifer tutting at him.

"Weapons aren't going to do you any good, Sam. Have you seen the state you're in? Best thing you can do is run."

"Be quiet!" Sam hissed at him, thinking that he'd prefer to not attract the thing's attention at all even though arming himself provided some reassurance, but Lucifer just laughed.

"I'm a hallucination, Sam: it can't hear me. You, on the other hand, it can hear. And it can hurt, unless you just get out of here. Don't bother getting armed, don't bother trying to get a look at it: just run."

Running away really wasn't Sam's style: never had been, but he couldn't pretend this was a situation like any he'd ever been in before. Still, he was somewhat hesitant to take what he felt like what was the cowardly option and just flee. It took for the noise to sound again and Lucifer yelling at him once more before he finally decided to just go. _I'm coming back,_ he promised himself, _and I'm going to get to the bottom of this. But I need to get out of here and find Dean first._

He was fumbling in the bag for the hall key, praying that it would work on the padlock, and was relieved when he finally managed to get it unlocked and dragged the door open with a screech of metal. He bolted through, slamming the gate shut behind him with a clang and snapping the padlock back into place. The growl sounded again, and this time he was certain he saw a shape in the corner of his eye entering the room, accompanied by the sound of metallic creaking and clanging to the slow rhythm of footsteps.

Part of him wanted to look: he was desperate to see what this monster was and know what he was facing, but even more so he was desperate for it to not see him. As he recalled the body in the storeroom, his imagination gave him enough to work with as to what this creature might be like. And with no shotguns, no pistols, no machetes, and no knowledge of what the hell was going on or barely any energy that wasn't coming from his last reserves of adrenaline or caffeine pills, Sam had never felt so vulnerable.

He was caught in his indecision to try and steal a glance back a moment longer, but then he heard Lucifer yell in his face one final time:

"Sam, _go!_ "

And then he turned and fled down the stairs into the pitch blackness below.


	7. What The Dark Hides

Metal clanged in time with his footsteps as Sam bolted down the steel staircase, not stopping until he'd put at least three levels between himself and whatever monster was up above. The light was growing dimmer the lower he went, and as he reached the fourth platform in the stairwell Sam collapsed onto the floor, leaning against the wall and refusing to go any further. He'd just about had enough of whatever the hell this was, and still hoped it was a nightmare he'd be waking from soon.

Beside him, he heard Lucifer's voice berating him. "What are you doing, Sam?"

Breathing heavily, Sam glanced over to see the figure of the fallen angel silhouetted against the remaining light coming from the floor above, while beside him the rest of the staircase descended into pitch darkness.

"This...this doesn't make any sense," Sam muttered in reply. "I'm not doing this anymore, Lucifer. There's no way it's real. Stop toying with me."

When the reply came, it was stern, and more sincere sounding than Sam had expected. "That's not a tune you can afford to keep playing. However hard you may find it to believe, everything here is real enough to hurt you, and the only way out is onward. You need to get up and keep going."

Even though Sam wished he didn't have to believe it, he did. Fear was enough to persuade him to keep pressing forward in search of a way out, but that did nothing to ease the exhaustion that had settled on him like lead. "I'm tired," he protested, "Thanks to you keeping me from sleeping. I just need a moment." He shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall, trying to claw back some small measure of energy from the brief break. Hell knew he'd be needing it later.

"Are you sure you have time for that, Sam?"

There wasn't chance for Sam to respond before a sound from somewhere below him jerked him back to full alertness. As if to illustrate Lucifer's point, a harsh, strangled sounding scream reverberated through the stairwell, and Sam immediately sprung to his feet, tensed and alert. He wanted to reach for a weapon, but having none, he balled his hands into fists in preparation for whatever may be coming his way. Several seconds passed without further event, but still on edge, Sam shot a question at the fallen angel beside him. "Alright, what was that?"

"Damned if I know."

"You _are_ damned."

"I still don't know."

It may not have been visible in the darkness, but Sam shot him a glare that would have been enough to make all but the Devil wither. "Are you fucking trying to help me or not?"

"I'm the motivation you need to keep moving forward. That's the best kind of help you could ask for."

Sam bit his tongue, realising that the argument wasn't something worth worrying about right now. "And moving forward means down there?" he asked apprehensively, gazing into the darkness the stairs led down into.

"Yep."

"And there's something down there, but there's something up there too?"

"Yep." The answer was again blunt and unhelpful, but it confirmed Sam's suspicions that he had no good options left. Whether Lucifer knew more than he was letting on or not, whichever way Sam went spelled danger.

"Alright..." he muttered, feeling his stomach squirm uncomfortably as he tried to psych himself up to continue his journey downwards. There was no point going back now.

Lucifer decided to add another unhelpful remark. "Got your flashlight, Sammy?"

Sam gritted his teeth and didn't respond. He wasn't an idiot who needed to be told, and had already drawn the flashlight halfway out of his bag by the time the angel made the comment.

Apprehensively, he switched it on and shone it in the direction he was about to descend, feeling a sense of dread at the thought of what the beam might land on. Seeing at first only the black metal steps, Sam took a breath and began to journey further into whatever nightmare he'd gotten into.

There were three more levels of stairs separated by platforms before Sam reached what appeared to be the bottom. As he shone the light onto the floor he saw that it was made of steel mesh – not what he'd expect to see in a hospital, but he'd long since abandoned the notion that was where he was – and there was an empty dark space extending further below it. If it had a bottom, the flashlight beam wasn't powerful enough to illuminate that far.

Sam stepped off the final step onto the floor, feeling the change in the surface through his slippers but relieved that it at least seemed strong enough to support him. He didn't know if the hallucination of Lucifer was still hanging round, and he didn't care to. The vision usually proved to be more on an aggravation than a help, and whatever Sam was going to have to face, he knew he would be facing it alone.

Looking about him from the foot of the stairs, darkness extended in all directions. He raised the flashlight and cast it around quickly, hoping to see a wall or something that would indicate which way he should go, but there was nothing close enough for the light to reach. So it seemed it would just be point and guess then.

Sam decided to head straight on from the bottom of the stairs, figuring that would be the most logical direction for a corridor to be pointing in, if there had been one, and hoping it would lead him towards a door or another room of some sort. He walked on in silence for several minutes, casting the flashlight about him and desperately hoping that at some point it would land on _something,_ but there was only the floor and darkness in all directions. Thinking he was going the wrong way, Sam turned round again and shone the light back in the direction he'd come, but the staircase was out of sight by now. If it was still there at all.

Trying to keep himself from panicking, Sam swallowed and took a few deep breaths. _Hold it together. I've faced worse than this before._

… _haven't I?_

He was starting to wonder.

Hoping it might reveal something helpful, he pointed the flashlight upwards to look above him, but just saw that the ceiling was even more chainlink a couple of feet above his head. There didn't seem to be anything resting on it, and Sam hoped that was a good thing. In the absence of any better ideas, he continued onward.

He'd gone a few more paces, casting the light back and forth to scan the general "forwards" direction, when he heard a faint noise behind him: the soft, dull sound of footsteps falling on the mesh floor. Sam froze immediately. As he did so, the noise turned to silence.

_Well, that's not disconcerting at all._

Turning slowly, and with a growing sense of dread, Sam brought up the flashlight to point behind him.

There was nothing there.

He swallowed, trying to moisten his dry mouth as he prepared to speak. "Lucifer," he began shakily, and aimed to sound more firm as he continued. "If you're still there, stop making this more difficult than it already is."

There was no response. As he contemplated that he'd never before heard the hallucination cast any footsteps, Sam thought he was grateful that nothing had replied. Whatever was back there, Sam doubted it was just an illusion, and he wasn't too keen to encounter whatever it was.

Several more seconds passed in silence, and as Sam realised that nothing was approaching him, he decided to press onwards. He turned around again and continued forwards, and just as he did so the footsteps started up again, sounding in time with his own. Sam didn't stop. If he couldn't see it and it wasn't getting any closer to him, then he could escape it.

He couldn't help but quicken his pace as he walked forward, and his pursuer followed in kind. Getting closer to the brink of panic, Sam broke into a run, desperate to just find a way out. The thing following him sped up too, and he could hear the noise getting closer, louder than it should have been on a floor that wasn't completely solid. Sam was almost certain that it would catch up with him now and he was readying himself to fight, however futile the effort may be, when suddenly the noise fell quiet.

That took him by surprise. He shouldn't have stopped, but he did, all the while his brain screaming at him to keep going while he had the chance, but his instincts told him to stay put. What had caused it to stop?

As he tried to regain control of his breathing, Sam again turned slowly around and cast the light back in the direction he came. Still, he saw nothing. Could the thing really just have vanished?

He shone the light back and forth a few times just to be sure, but still there appeared to be nothing emerging from the darkness. Sam had just about convinced himself to turn around keep going, but then the beam momentarily landed on something beneath the floor.

Instantly, Sam froze again, every muscle in his body tensing up. His heart was in his mouth as he tried to return the light to where he'd seen it: a vague shape underneath the mesh. Could it be the same kind of monster he'd almost run into upstairs? Or something else? Whatever it was, it didn't appear to be there now when the beam returned.

For a few more moments, Sam stood stock still, listening for some indication that there was still something there. The only noise he heard was the sound of his own breathing, seeming far too loud in the silence surrounding him.

Had he imagined it? Was he imagining all of this?

The thought that all this could still just be in his head was in no way reassuring. If there was a threat nearby, he needed to know where and what it was. Illusion or not, he had to know if he could fight it or if he had no choice but to run. Sam hated how pathetic the thought made him feel, but he knew the second option was most likely.

As the flashlight continued to reveal nothing in the emptiness extending below the floor, Sam considered his options. It would surely be best to just turn round and keep going. If there was something pursuing him, then it clearly wasn't taking advantage of the chance to attack now, but he still felt a deep unease about the whole situation. His sense of isolation and confusion was even worse now than the time he'd been abducted by Azazel and taken to an abandoned town in the middle of nowhere. At least that place had still seemed to obey the laws of physics.

Still staring at the floor, wondering if something besides Lucifer was toying with him, Sam's contemplation was interrupted as he felt a drop of cold moisture land on his head. It took a moment for him to process what it was, but then two more drops followed in quick succession. He blinked instinctively, but as his brain processed the sensation, he felt his gut churn as he barely needed to guess what it was. Steeling himself for whatever he was about to see, Sam turned the flashlight beam upwards as he tilted his neck to stare at the ceiling. There, resting on the chainlink above him, was a corpse - mutilated just like the one he'd found in the storeroom and dripping blood down slowly to land on his face.

Sam grimaced as he fought to stay calm, inching backwards to avoid the trickle of crimson fluid spilling down onto him. _Okay, so there's monsters up there, killing people, and there's probably a monster below me, and I need to keep looking for a way out..._

He was trying to formulate a plan, something coherent and purposeful just to reassure himself and keep his sanity in check, but then he felt a sudden rattling of the metal floor immediately below him. Sam yelped, jumping backwards and whipping the flashlight back down to point at the floor, knowing for sure now that something was there. The sight that met him was just as horrific as anything he could have imagined.

Right by his feet, a face leered up at him: skin pale and cracked with blood vessels clearly displayed near the surface, eyes pupilless and entirely white, its sharp, crooked teeth bared in a snarl. The most terrifying thing was that it was clearly human, yet a human for whom something had gone terribly, terribly wrong.

It snapped its jaws at Sam, clawed yellow fingers reaching up towards him through the holes in the metal, and not wanting to even try to fight anymore Sam turned and ran. Whatever kind of nightmare this was, whatever kind of _Hell…_ it was so far beyond anything he knew how to deal with. He needed Dean. Somehow he wished there was a way for his brother to help him, but Sam felt a very real increasing fear that Dean was just as in need of help as he was.

He'd only gone a few feet when he heard a vicious, grunting snarl behind him, and then without warning or explanation, the ground began to shake.


	8. Only Ghosts Follow

There was only one time Sam had experienced anything like an earthquake. It had been when he'd unwittingly freed Lucifer from the cage, him and Dean standing in a monastery while the ground cracked and shook beneath them and evil clawed its way up out of Hell. He found himself thinking back to that now as he heard the groans and creeks of the metal below him warping, tremors shuddering through it and almost throwing him off his feet. Nobody was going to magically poof him to safety this time. It was down to himself to himself to find a way to escape, and all he could think to do was run.

The flashlight beam was crazed and erratic as Sam fought to keep his balance, struggling to keep it pointing it in the vague direction of forwards as he ran near blindly on. With one more shake of the ground below, he finally lost his balance and fell sideways, expecting to land on the trembling metal floor. It came as a surprise when he felt his shoulder hit a wall, and he felt a surge of elation that at last he'd found the boundary to this place and there must surely _somewhere_ be a door.

The moment was short lived as an instant later he felt something grab onto his shoulder from behind. Instinctively, he pulled away and balled his free hand into a first as he spun round to try to punch away whatever was there. At first he'd assumed that the thing he'd heard behind had caught up with him, but when he saw what it was, he thought that might be even worse.

There were arms: dozens – probably more beyond the range he could see – reaching for him out of the wall. They weren't even attached to any creature as far as he could tell, but were embedded in the brick of the wall itself, reaching for him, grabbing onto him, pulling at his hair and clothes…

Sam couldn't help but cry out in fear and desperation as he tried to fight them off, using the flashlight as a club to bat them away. He almost seemed to be having some success as he pulled away from the wall, but then he felt fingers close around his ankles, more hands reaching up for him out of the floor. He kicked and struggled and yelled, trying desperately to get away. Still the ground shook. Still he heard the sound of monsters growling and closing in.

This had to be a nightmare. He had to be waking up soon…

Quite by chance, the flashlight beam fell across something in front of him: a rectangle of metal – a door - embedded in the wall from which the arms had sprung like forests. Maybe that was the way out. It had to be. If he could just reach it, perhaps he'd find a way through to the other side and wake up and be done with this nightmare.

Through the dark, Sam struggled towards the only exit he could see, kicking and lashing out aggressively against the things that tried to pull him back. Behind him he heard the sound of metal splitting apart; a sharp, ringing clang accompanying a wrenching groan as if the floor was being torn open. He pushed on even more urgently, grateful that as least the grip of the hands seemed weak enough to easily break, and praying that the luck would last enough for the door not to be locked.

As he reached it and pushed his hands against it in desperation, he realised he wasn't that fortunate.

_Hall key._

He still had that, and though it was far from certain it would work, it was the best shot he had.

Still fighting to keep his balance and not looking behind, Sam reached into his bag. He was mostly out of range of the arms here, besides a few pulling feebly at the hems of his pants, but he knew there was still something advancing on him and he had to hurry. He pulled the key out, and then for several seconds struggled desperately to fit it into the keyhole as his hands shook along with the tremors that wracked the entire room and the surges of fear coursing through him.

But then it slid into the lock, the key turned, and just as he thought the entire room was about to collapse Sam pushed the door open and stumbled through into the space beyond.

He didn't lend a moment to observing his new surroundings, but grabbed the door again as quickly as possible and slammed it shut behind him.

Against all logic and everything Sam thought he understood, the roaring sounds of crashing and groans coming from the other side immediately fell silent. The world was completely still, and Sam was left standing on his own in the dark, semi-collapsed against the steel door and the only noise that of his own laboured breathing.

"Well, that was intense, wasn't it Sammy?" a voice piped up again from off to his right.

Despite his exhaustion, Sam's head immediately snapped round again to look towards it. He'd dropped the flashlight on the floor as he'd fallen through the doorway, but from where it had landed its ambient light was enough to show the faint outline of Lucifer stood surveying him calmly.

"You…" Sam snapped at him. "You were there for all of that?"

"Of course I was. I'm in your head Sam. I was right behind you the whole time."

Sam gave him a disbelieving look. "Yeah?" he growled. "Well thanks for the help." After that ordeal, it was even harder to believe Lucifer really had any intentions of helping him escape, and it had been pretty hard to believe to begin with.

"What did you expect me to do? I'm just a hallucination."

Sam honestly didn't know what he thought the vision would have done, but he was scared and frustrated and needed something to take out his anger on. "How about you tell me what that thing, or… _things_ or whatever is, and how do I kill it?" he shouted.

As he'd only been expecting, he was met with an unhelpful shrug. "I don't know. But I do know how you could find out: keep going."

Sam just swore at him, before going to pick up the flashlight and then leant back against the wall again, needing more time to recover. He was aching all over and there were small cuts stinging his arms and legs from where the hands had scratched at him, and right now he felt like he wanted to do nothing more than sleep. Surprisingly, Lucifer was patient, giving him a minute or two to at least catch his breath, if not rest fully. Sam looked down at the floor, relieved to see that it was back to solid linoleum, and the walls were again painted plaster free from any arms or other kinds of unnatural appendages. This seemed more like how the hospital before the stairs had been, but aside from those few details, he was still in near complete darkness and couldn't see much else.

His breathing having evened out after a few moments, Sam raised the flashlight again to try to look ahead of him, but felt another rush of horror as the beam flickered, the batteries clearly starting to die. "No, please don't do this…" he muttered, the failing light enough to bring him close to panic again, although he knew he had spares in his bag. He was starting to contemplate how to go about changing batteries in pitch darkness when Lucifer made another comment.

"You do realise you're standing right next to a light switch, Sam?"

Sam was about to make another sarcastic remark in reply when he realised how helpful that actually was. Turning to look at the wall beside him in the dim light, he noticed that there was indeed a light switch by his left shoulder, and he reached up to turn it on.

Around him, the blackness suddenly dissipated as the lights sprung to life, although the illumination they provided was an eerie shade of yellow far less bright than Sam had hoped for. There were only a handful of dim lightbulbs spaced regularly in the walls to provide the light, several of them blown out, but it was enough for Sam to finally see where he was. He found himself standing at the foot of a corridor that extended indefinitely into the distance, where the light wasn't quite enough to reveal what lay beyond. Directly in front of him, just a few paces away, was an empty wheelchair, positioned exactly in the middle of the corridor so that its seat was facing towards Sam. What it was doing there, Sam had no clue, but it didn't exactly make any less sense than anything else in this place.

"Sammy, you look awful," he heard Lucifer remark, and as Sam turned to scowl at him the angel nodded in the direction of the wheelchair. "Why don't you go sit in it? I could push you. Wait… no I can't. I'm not real."

Sam shot him another glare in irritation at his unhelpfulness, but then as he glanced down at himself, he realised he did indeed look terrible. The once-white hospital scrubs he was wearing were still partly damp and covered in grime from his crawl through the vents earlier, and added to that more blood had piled up from his ordeal in the chainlink room, most of it his own. Several of the cuts and scratches he'd obtained were bleeding more freely than he'd thought. Just the sight of it caused more pain to invade his awareness more insistently than it had a moment ago, and he was still struggling to think past the tired fuzziness that had settled on his brain. He could only imagine how much worse his exhaustion was showing on his face.

His muscles feeling shaky and slow to respond, Sam reached into his bag with the intention of going for another caffeine pill, but then changed his mind and instead went for one of the epinephrine shots, deciding he needed something stronger to dull the pain in his limbs and restore some of his last reserves of energy.

"And I didn't even need to tell you! Glad to see you're finally thinking for yourself," Lucifer said in a tone of mock pride as he watched Sam's actions.

"Fuck off," Sam growled back, trying not to pay the angel much attention as he sank the needle into the inside of his left wrist and injected the fluid into his veins. It seemed to have an effect almost immediately, his head clearing and the stinging all over his skin becoming less sharp. Sam let out a sigh as the soothing sensation spread over him, far from enough to ease all the aches completely, but so welcome after everything he'd just been through. With the needle now empty he was about to discard it on the floor, but then considered that the sharp end may make a useful weapon in future and slipped it back inside the bag.

Feeling better, Sam straightened up as he prepared to continue. "Alright, now what do I…" he was about to ask of the angel, but as he looked around he realised that hallucination had vanished again. "Okay, I suppose I did technically ask for that," Sam muttered to himself, although now that he was on his own again, he was less sure how much that was actually what he wanted.

There were no obvious turn offs from the corridor that he could see, but the only way to find out if it led anywhere – which surely it must do, because no way in Hell was Sam going back – would be to continue onward. Sidestepping the wheelchair, Sam began to advance down the corridor towards the dark space in the distance, hoping more would come into view as he approached it. He'd barely gone four paces when, yet again, he heard a noise behind him: this time the grating, slightly squeaky sound of unoiled wheels turning.

Sam froze immediately, a single word crossing through his mind. _No._ This had just about gone beyond the limits of everything he thought he could take. He could feel his heart beating more quickly as he thought he knew exactly what was happening, and although he couldn't quite figure out the exact nature of the danger, another trickle of fear ran up his spine.

Turning to look back over his shoulder, he saw that – just as he'd thought – the wheelchair had turned itself around and appeared to have followed him. All without there being anything sitting in it.

_This cannot be real._

Sam spun round again fully in order to face it, the mobility device sitting stationary and deceptively innocuous looking in the middle of the floor. Its motionlessness almost seemed to be a taunt, as if it was daring him to move. Well, after all the other things he'd faced in his lifetime, Sam Winchester was not about to let himself be intimidated by a chair on wheels. No matter how creepy said chair may be.

Cautiously, Sam took a single pace backwards, still keeping his eyes locked on the wheelchair. As if on cue, it rolled forward a metre or so to match him.

"No," Sam said out loud this time, sounding half like the chair was a dog he was trying to scold, and half like he was trying to convince himself this couldn't be happening. He'd just come through a room of monsters in complete pitch darkness being pursued by something, and he was not about to do the same thing with a wheelchair, of all things. Maybe if he just picked the damn thing up and smashed it against a wall, or at least turned it upside down…

The thought of actually touching it was unnerving, but then he told himself to stop being such a baby and that he'd faced up to much more terrifying things before. If he didn't want it to follow him, then he was going to have to do something about it, and just flipping it over seemed like the best plan. Taking a deep breath, Sam took a step towards the wheelchair, almost expecting it to back away again and preparing to have to chase it up against the wall, but it didn't move. He stretched out a hand towards it, intending to just grab the armrests and flip it upside down, but as his hands made contact with the metal frame Sam felt a strange rush of air behind him. He didn't have time to look back before something jolted beneath him, his vision blurred to white, and then he thought he was spinning and falling into the sky…


	9. Interlude II

_Bones crunch beneath his knuckles. Blood vessels burst as his fist makes impact, skin splitting and swelling as he the blows land with all the might of Hell behind them._

_Sam feels it, his nerves alight with power, yet he isn't in command._

" _It's okay Sammy…" Dean's voice croaks out, sounding weak and distant, but still Sam hears it. "Sammy, it's okay. I'm here…"_

Dean…

_The word doesn't reach his lips. It barely reaches the edges of his conscious mind, an ocean inside his head weighing it down and drowning it out, drowning him with it…_

_He fights to stay afloat, but there's a lead weight pulling him under._

" _I'm not going to leave you…"_

_He hears Dean's voice, and tries desperately to swim towards it, but there's a stronger, darker presence lurking somewhere nearby._

Don't you know, Sam? It's too late. We've already been here before…

_He doesn't understand, but he tries so hard to remember, tries so hard to take back control. There's sinister laughter ringing somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, mocking him._

It's already been and gone, Sam. You can't save your brother.

" _I will!" he somehow manages to shout, but he doesn't know where it is his voice is heard. He doesn't know where he is at all._

Too…late…

_Another blow lands. And another. And a hundred… a thousand more…_

_Sam screams for himself to stop, but by the time he hears it, he realises he's only hitting a corpse. There's nothing left but bone, crumbling to dust beneath his hands..._

_And somewhere in the dark, the laughter goes on..._


	10. Beyond The Labyrinth

Sam recoiled suddenly, breathing in sharply as he felt his consciousness slam back into focus. He was standing back in the darkened corridor, the wheelchair in front of him, and the echoes of whatever it had just triggered still ringing in his brain.

_What was that?_

It reminded him of the bizarre experience he'd had leaving the bedroom earlier, but he had no way of figuring out what that was all about now. If he allowed himself to dwell on it now it would only erode his sanity further, and that could be as good as a death sentence in his current circumstances. The only way to get answers would be to keep going, and for now his main priority was to find a way that led out of here. Even if it meant being pursued by some kind of creepy possessed chair.

It seemed he couldn't even touch it without there being some kind of horrible effect on him, which meant turning it upside down wasn't going to work. If only he had some salt with him. Was there some kind of spirit or ghost in the chair causing it to move, or was it something else…? Well, in either case, with no effective weapons to hand, Sam didn't want to risk finding out.

"Okay, I am going to keep walking now, and you are not going to follow me," Sam said firmly, not expecting the words to have any effect other than to make himself feel slightly better. He turned round again and continued on, and sure enough, the squeaking of the wheels resumed much too loud in his ears as he advanced further down the corridor. Sam gritted his teeth at the noise and resisted the urge to look back. If all it was going to do was follow him and nothing more, then he thought he was just going to have to let it. Actually doing anything to it wasn't going to work, and he had no desire to try touching it again, but he hoped that he'd soon reach a staircase the chair couldn't follow him up.

It was difficult to hold his nerve and not break into a run, but Sam managed to keep his pace steady as he came up on what appeared to be the first junction in the corridor, giving him the option of turning either left or right. He chose right, hoping there was a chance that the chair would decide to go left of its own accord, but of course that turned out not to be the case.

The light grew dimmer yet again as he rounded the corner, there being even fewer light bulbs in the walls now to guide the way. Sam considered pulling out the flashlight again as the light fixtures were barely enough to illuminate the floor, but then decided that conserving the batteries may be a better idea if he didn't know when he'd need it again.

After a few more yards, the wheelchair still chillingly and infuriatingly trailing him like a dog following its master, the corridor branched again and offered him a further choice of directions. If Sam wasn't careful, there was a very real chance of him getting lost now, and he was growing increasingly fearful of what he might encounter around any corner. This time, still going entirely on guesswork, he chose left.

Going further still, it wasn't long before the various forks and junctions Sam encountered turned into an all out maze. Now it was almost pitch dark, there was some kind of possessed wheelchair following him, and Sam still had no idea which way he was going. If he hadn't been so focused on getting out of here so that he could find out what had happened to Dean, this may well have been the point at which he'd snapped.

"Hold it together," he told himself, "You've come through worse than this, and you're not going back now."

He'd only just given himself that pep talk when in the distance there came the sounds of banging. Three of them, evening spaced, and then there was silence. Sam froze again, turning to look behind him and trying to get a feel for where the noises had come from, but he simply couldn't tell. Did that mean there was some other danger out there, following him, or not?

Whatever had caused the noise, wherever it was coming from… it could turn out to be as harmlessly unsettling as the chair, for all Sam knew, or it could be something much more deadly. But there was no way he could take the risk. If the sounds spelled danger, he wasn't equipped to deal with another threat. "Dammit," he growled, thinking now might be the time to run.

When after a moment or two there came several more bangs, Sam decided that would be the right call.

He broke into a sprint, taking each junction with a snap decision as to which direction he headed, hearing the screech of wheels behind him as the chair tried to keep up. _I hope its fucking wheels fall off,_ Sam thought to himself, but the sentiment did little to supress the panic that was building inside him as he realised he was completely lost. He had no idea if he was going back on himself, running towards the danger, or simply going in circles.

He'd been running blind for almost a minute, heading through spots of pitch darkness where the intermittent light failed to reach, when he heard the banging sound again. This time it was closer, although if he was running towards it or it was getting closer to him, he had no idea.

Rounding yet another corner, Sam's eyes fell upon a wall up ahead. Set in the middle of it was a dim incandescent bulb, glowing yellow, and beneath it Sam was surprised to see something drawn on the wall: an arrow pointing left. The sight caused him to hesitate momentarily, wondering what it meant. Was it telling him where to go? How could he trust it? Especially when everything in this place seemed out to get him.

The noises sounded again, and Sam knew he had to make a decision. Maybe he was still better off taking his chances with the arrows that running round aimlessly and only getting more lost.

Sam started on again, and when he reached the foot of the corridor he took the turn as indicated to find himself running down another hallway that was almost completely dark save for another light at the end. This time there was an arrow drawn on the floor pointing right, and again he followed.

About five turns later, with the wheelchair still on his tail and the noises sounding sporadically in the distance, Sam rounded a final corner and suddenly came to a stop, surprised at the sight in front of him. It seemed that somehow he'd reached the end of the maze, and stretching on ahead of him was a long dark corridor. There were no lights in the walls, and for the most part the floor wasn't even visible in the darkness, but in the distant he could see a small rectangle of bright, white light: a doorway. Could that be the way out?

Sam felt a strong urge to run towards it, desperate to reach the light, but at the same time a deep sense of unease was holding him back. This felt wrong.

He'd been running round in the dark, pursued by some unknown monsters in a world he wasn't even sure was real, and now he found himself facing a literal light at the end of a tunnel. Heading towards it perhaps wasn't the best idea. What if this was all inside his head? What if he was still in the hospital, in a coma? Running towards the light could be what woke him up, or it could mean he never woke again.

But then, what alternative did he have?

As Sam stood frozen in his moment of indecision, behind him he again heard a noise. It wasn't the banging this time, but instead it was the same creaking squeak of the wheelchair. But this time, Sam wasn't moving.

On edge, Sam turned to look back at it. It was still a few metres away, but slowly, but surely, it was rolling over the floor towards him. After the long time trailing him, it seemed as if it was finally trying to catch him up.

Sam took a pace backwards, wondering if that would have any effect, but if anything he thought that the chair seemed to get slightly faster. Sam swallowed, feeling another rush of fear creep its way up his spine.

_Come on, it's just a chair. What's it going to do if it catches you?_

The thought was meant to be a rhetorical attempt to alleviate his fear, but as he contemplated the answer, Sam began to think that maybe it could be quite sinister after all.

From the direction he'd come in, not too far away, he heard the rhythmic pattern of three bangs again. Instinctively, he took several paces back again away from the noise, and in response the chair sped up yet again. It didn't look like he had many options left.

Sam turned and ran.

Ahead of him, the light beyond the doorway shone like a beacon, and despite his tired limbs wanting to just collapse and rest Sam urged them onwards. He could hear the screech of the wheelchair on the floor behind getting faster, and again the intermittent banging noises seemed to be approaching him, increasing in volume.

_Come on, this has to be the way out…_

Feeling certain that whatever was behind him was about to catch him up, Sam bolted the last few yards in a desperate sprint. Finally, his feet pounded over the threshold into the room beyond, and the premature rush of relief he felt was stifled as he realised this wasn't over yet. There was a doorway, but no door, and nothing to slam behind him to keep the monsters out. Unlike last time, nothing magically silenced whatever was chasing him, and Sam could still hear them getting closer. Desperately, he cast his eyes about this new room in search of another way out.

This new room was perfectly square, with black and white linoleum tiles on the floor, and white incandescent strip lights in the ceiling, which would have been comfortingly bright if circumstances weren't otherwise so dire. In the back left corner of the room, Sam could see a table pushed up against the wall, upon which was sat an old circular-dial faced telephone. But other than that, the room was completely empty, and from what Sam could tell, there were no other doorways and no other way out.

Panic rushed through him as he desperately tried to think what he should do now. Could he go back? Was that even a possibility? And even if he were able to fight the things off, what was it he'd be fighting?

Still he could hear the bangs echoing in his ears, and he spun round to face the doorway, steeling himself to face whatever may be about to come through.

Sam could see the wheelchair rolling closer, frighteningly fast, and he was preparing to kick and smash and break the fucking thing the minute it was in range. But then, just as it was about to cross the threshold to the room, it stopped abruptly. Along with it, the banging fell silent.

_What…?_

The sudden inexplicable quiet left Sam confused and unnerved. He stood staring towards the chair, bewildered, while at the same time feeling a cautious sense of relief. Why had it done that? He took a tentative step in the direction of the doorway, wondering if that would coax it into moving again, but it simply stood motionless just beyond the threshold. It almost seemed to be waiting for him, for when he would, inevitably, have to go back out into the dark.

Well, if it was at least no longer following him, Sam thought that, for now, he could live with that. He let out a slow, shuddering breath of relief, wanting to just collapse on the floor and grateful that he at least had this moment of relative safety to gather himself together. He had no idea why he wasn't being followed into this room, or how he was going to get out again, but for now he was glad for the chance to recover.

His nerves had almost managed to partly unwind themselves from the state of permanent tension they'd been caught up in, but a moment later, that was halted abruptly by the sound of a high, piercing noise invading Sam's ears: that of the persistent and far too threatening ring of a phone.


	11. Dead Line

Sam felt a chill run through him, immediately back on edge at the sound.

His head turned fearfully to look towards the phone sat on the table. The line didn't even appear to be plugged into anything as far as he could tell, and that realisation caused another cold swirl of fear to churn in his gut. What did he do? Answer it?

The alternative seemed to be to just let it keep ringing until it stopped, and Sam wasn't sure how much more his nerves could take of the shrill noise grating against his eardrums. Even if the thought of what might be on the other end of the line scared him, he wasn't a coward. He needed answers; some sort of clue as to what was happening here, and so he was just going to have to answer the phone and find out.

Having made his decision, Sam crossed purposefully over to the telephone and reached out an unsteady hand to grasp the receiver, before finally lifting it to his ear. At first he could only hear faint static at the other end of the line, and in an uncertain sounding voice, Sam tried to prompt whoever might be there. "Hello?"

Initially, there was just more crackling of static, and Sam wondered if the line was dead after all, but then a voice managed to break through the white noise.

" _Sammy_?"

Sam felt his heart leap into his mouth at the word. "Dean?" That had definitely been his brother's voice, and Sam felt a stab of anxiety and fear over what it meant. He crushed the receiver to his ear, his attention focused entirely on what he could pick up on the other end of the call. "Dean, where are you? What happened?"

More white noise crackled on the line and Sam could tell the call was breaking up, but he listened as intently as he could to decipher what his brother was saying. While he was so glad just to hear the sound of Dean's voice, the faint snippets of words he could make out only scared him more.

"… _sorry, Sam…couldn't…Cas was…make…I'll be…"_

With that, the line went dead, leaving Sam just as confused and even more frightened than before.

"No, wait…Dean!" Sam yelled into the phone, but was met only with the dial tone ringing cruelly in his ear. "Dammit," he growled, slamming the receiver angrily back down into its holder. What did it mean, if Dean was trying to make contact him? Was he in trouble? Could he be stuck somewhere in this place too? And perhaps that meant all of this wasn't just in Sam's head.

Sam stood leaning against the table, breathing heavily as he felt a renewed sense of panic and urgency. He couldn't just be trying to get himself out of here now; he had to help Dean first. But what was going on? His hand fished in his pocket for the screwed up note he'd found earlier, and he flattened it out to read back to himself:

" _I'm sorry Sammy"_

That was all it said. _Sorry…_ The first word Dean had spoken on the phone. But sorry for what, Sam didn't know. _What have you gotten yourself into, Dean?_ Sam found himself wondering as he re-pocketed the note. _What have you gotten_ me _into?_

He took another deep breath as he tried to figure out what to do. The phone in this place seemed to work, to some extent, although Sam couldn't figure out how. Did that mean it was worth trying to call out? Well, he didn't think it could hurt to try. Or maybe it could, but it was worth the risk.

He had Dean's cell numbers memorised – well, the three main ones – and he thought that if he was trying to make contact with Dean again they were worth a shot, although he didn't know what his brother had called him from in the first place.

Again, Sam lifted the receiver, his hands shaking significantly more this time, and began the long process of dialling the number on the old-fashioned interface. He wasn't really expecting the call to go through at all, so when he heard a click on the other end as if someone had answered, he felt a sudden rush of hope.

"Dean…" he began urgently, but was immediately cut off by a fiercely loud, high-pitched ringing erupting from the phone.

_Maybe that was a bad move._

The receiver tumbled from his grasp as he let go of it in shock, and as it clattered to the floor Sam clutched his hands to his head, realising that the noise wasn't just coming from the call. It was everywhere: the piercing shriek reverberating throughout the room and growing in intensity as if it originated in the very walls. He cried out in pain, the sound seeming to set his nerve endings alight, but he couldn't even hear his own screams above the noise. There was the taste of blood in his mouth; vessels burst from the intensity of it, and Sam felt more liquid dripping down his face from his nose and eyes. He felt almost sure that the noise was going to shatter his skull, and that his brain would liquefy and stream out of the cracks. _What's happening here…?_ He didn't know, couldn't even think straight anymore. He just wanted the pain to stop.

No relief came. Sam didn't know how long he endured the agony of the ringing – it could have been seconds, or hours – but at some point he realised the light seemed to have turned red - although maybe that was from the blood in his eyes – and there was a cold rush of air blowing past him. Defying explanation, he felt as though he were falling sideways, yet somehow not moving at all, and being pulled backwards along a long, dark tunnel towards some inescapable end…


	12. Interlude III

_Flames lick at his skin. They erupt inside him, around him…his whole world is fire and pain._

" _Having fun yet, Sammy?"_

_The voice laughs at him, and Sam cries out. He tries to twist away from the heat, but he can't tell where he ends and the flames began._

" _Was it all worth it, in the end?" the voice mocks. "Was your pathetic little world worth it? Was it worth defying destiny for? Because either way, you were always the one who would suffer for it."_

_More pain lashes into him, and he feels it cut past flesh he no longer has, flaying his soul alive._

" _Brave little Sammy Winchester, Lucifer's vessel, the Boy with the Demon Blood!"_

 _He can't tell if the words are meant to praise or torment him, but either way it hurts too much to care. He just wants the agony to stop._ Please let it stop…

 _The Devil shows no such kindness. "Now you've gone and left your brother all alone. Do you think he'll be okay? Do you think he_ ever _knew how to be okay without you?"_

_It feels like a storm is raging around him, a violent wind like air blown from bellows to stoke the fire. The thought of having left Dean on his own hurts more than all of the flames combined._

" _Of course not, Sam," Lucifer laughs. "You always hurt him when you leave, and you always leave your family behind."_

_Sam wants to retaliate, to fight back, but he's overpowered by both the angels down here. Neither shows him mercy, letting him suffer the full might of the flames. Unlike Adam, who did his duty, Sam is the reason they're trapped here. He's the one to blame for their fate, and the one thing on which they agree is that they'll make him pay._

" _But's it's okay, we're your family now," Lucifer soothes him, at the same time pulling him deeper into the inferno. "And we're the ones who'll hurt you, because_ that's what families do…"

_More flames ignite deep within his soul, and Sam screams…_


	13. Red

"Sammy!"

Someone was screaming his name. It was harsh, puncturing past the ringing in his ears as he felt it roared inches from his face, and his eyes opened to see Lucifer leaning over him. The world had gone red, although it seemed to be because the lights had actually dimmed and changed color rather than because of the blood vessels in his eyes bursting, although his head hurt so much it was hard to tell. He realised he'd collapsed on the floor, and although there was a pounding in his skull, he thought the ringing he could hear was just an echo in his brain now and the physical sound seemed to have stopped.

The flashback was still vivid and present in his head, and as Lucifer continued to shout to get his attention, Sam scrambled backwards to get away. Now he was certain the Devil was playing with him. "What the Hell was that?" he snapped, masking his fear with anger. It scared him further to realise he could taste blood.

"It's the monsters that are out to get you, Sam. Haven't you figured that out by now?"

Lucifer seemed to be taunting him, and Sam glared back. "No. It was you," he gasped, the flashback replaying with more clarity than he wished his memory had. He could almost feel his flesh still alight as he gazed up at the Devil above him. "I remember it. There was you and Michael in the Cage. This is all you. You're doing this."

It wasn't the first time he'd made that accusation since finding himself here, but now he was saying it with much more certainty than he'd previously felt. Whatever had just happened had cemented his beliefs that the Devil was behind it, but again, Lucifer's only reaction was to roll his eyes.

"If I am doing it, it's only because you're making me. I'm only in your head, remember?"

Sam stared up at him, confused but most definitely mistrusting. "You've been screwing with me ever since Cas broke my wall. None of this is any more real than when it first happened. I'm going to find a way to wake up, just like I did then."

Lucifer's eyes narrowed at him. "Are you, Sam?" he asked sinisterly, and then without warning he moved swiftly to reach down to where Sam was still lying in the floor, making as if to grab him. Sam flinched, shut his eyes and tried to scramble back, but even as his movements were slow and tired he felt nothing. Confused, he opened his eyes again to see Lucifer waving his hands in front if his face. Then angel seemed to be trying to touch him, but even as Sam thought he should be feeling something, he didn't.

"See?" Lucifer said. "You're right. I'm not real. I'm not hurting you. But that?" He then jabbed a hand in the direction of the phone on the table, where the receiver still hung by its cord an inch above the floor. "That hurt, didn't it? Because there's things down here that are real enough to do that. If you think you can find a way out of here without my help, then great, but don't come crying to me when everything goes wrong."

He then backed off, giving Sam space to stand up and waiting for his reaction. Sam didn't move immediately, but he glanced uncertainly from the phone to Lucifer, wondering if the hallucination had been helping him or just leading him into danger this whole time. It was impossible to tell.

"Alright," he said shakily, getting unsteadily to his feet. "I'll keep listening, for now. What just happened? Why's everything gone red?"

"Emergency lights," Lucifer answered boredly. "Power's gone out. I told you it would."

Sam waited expectantly for him to continue, and grew annoyed when he didn't. "So what am I meant to do now?"

"Turn it back on, of course. Unless you fancy your chances of getting out of here in the dark."

"Is that possible?"

"No."

Sam gave him a withering glare. There was nothing more infuriating than having the angel pretend that he was helping while simultaneously being quite obviously as deliberately unhelpful as possible. "Great," he snarled sarcastically. "So how do I get the power back? Because in case you haven't noticed, I'm kind of stuck in here."

The hallucination gave a nonchalant shrug. "Well, the generator is just down that way."

He pointed to a spot just over Sam's shoulder, and confused, Sam turned to look. Where there had previously been nothing but blank wall there was now a metal door, illuminated by a glowing red arrow sign above it like an emergency exit. Sam felt his stomach squirm uneasily, filled with apprehension at its sudden appearance. "That wasn't there before."

"But it's there now."

Sam wondered why he'd ever expected the angel to say something helpful in response to that, but then realised that he hadn't. "So I'm supposed to go through a door that's appeared out of nowhere, to turn on the power in a place that it doesn't even make sense for it to have electricity, because some illusion tells me it's gonna help me escape?" he remarked, having had enough of this. "What the hell is going on here?"

The answer was as vague as ever. "Well, there's only one way to find out, isn't there?"

Sam gritted his teeth, but then turned back to stare at the door again, realising he didn't have much choice. He couldn't go back the way he came, and this was the only option left. "Alright, fine," he growled, crossing to the door and reaching at for the handle, although he paused nervously before grasping into it. He'd been expecting Lucifer to have some further comment to make, and he glanced back briefly to wait for whatever snide remark was coming, but only saw that the room was empty. Sam's stomach squirmed.

"Okay..." he murmured, trying to comfort himself. "You don't need him. You can do this."

He held his breath before grasping onto the door handle in one quick movement, almost expecting it to trigger another all-too-vivid flashback, but the action proved completely uneventful. Sam exhaled then inhaled again very slowly before he at last pushed the door open.

He didn't know what he'd been expecting to find on the other side, but as he eased the crack in the doorframe wider he began to hear the sound of running water in the distance. At his feet was the top of another metal staircase that descended in the darkness below, and with his hands trembling slightly, Sam reached once more into his bag for the flashlight.

Still a bundle of nerves as he started to walk down the steps, Sam reached a hand to grasp at the scrunched up note in his pocket, thinking of Dean. "I'm gonna find out what happened, I promise," he whispered softly, forcing himself to believe it. "I'm gonna find you, and find a way out for both of us."

The words were quiet and only slightly reassuring in the silence, but Sam was glad of them as the clang of the door closing behind him shook his ears, and then he was left alone descending further towards whatever awaited in the shadows below.


	14. Leviathan

The air grew colder the deeper Sam went. He could feel the chill seeping into his still-damp clothes, turning the fabric into what felt like ice, and he shivered. The one plus side to the bitter cold was that at least it kept him awake. He was exhausted, but the feel of his own chilled blood clinging to his skin kept him alert, preventing his mind from switching off. At least this way he was making progress.

_Clang. Clang. Clang._

The sound of his footsteps were a jarring, ominous counterpoint to his heartbeat, which still raced manically no matter how hard he tried to keep it under control. He was attempting to tread lightly, but the hollow ring of each metal step still felt disturbingly loud as he descended further into the dark. The flashlight did little to help him see more than a few steps ahead. In the distance below, the sound of running water grew closer.

He was just beginning to wonder how far down the steps could possibly go when the flashlight beam finally fell on flat, grey floor and he felt a change in the textures beneath his feet. The thin metal of the stairs gave way to something sturdier; concrete or stone, he suspected, and Sam felt the knot in his stomach untwist just slightly as he spied what looked like light up ahead. Just from the whitish-grey glow and the absence of the menacing red of the emergency lights, it couldn't have been artificial. He didn't know how far underground he must be by this point for natural light to somehow penetrate this far, but then, he wasn't sure how well he could apply the concept of "underground" to wherever the hell he was.

Sam continued onward. His path brought him to a platform at the top of what looked like a vast underground sewer system, judging from the many canals of running water below him and – unfortunately – the smell. Sam grimaced, but continued to look around him. The pale light filtered in from narrow grills in the ceiling above, much too high to reach, and with no chance of discerning what was beyond. Lower down, judging from the high arches of the waterways and the grimy, cracked ceramic tiles, Sam would have guessed that the sewer system was Victorian. Not that that made sense, but his confusion had long since given way to acceptance that he wasn't in a world that made sense anymore.

He was just contemplating why he was supposed to go this way to get the power back on and what he was meant to do now when he heard a voice pipe up again, "The generator's this way."

Sam turned his head to see Lucifer stood waiting for him at the far side of a metal bridge spanning one of the waterways. He shot the fallen angel a customary glare, although that had been a surprisingly helpful remark. "The generator's in the sewer?" Sam's tone was only half sarcastic.

"The generator's in the basement. You get to the basement through the sewer."

"Just great," Sam remarked, taking the first step to continue across the bridge. "You decided to start being helpful all of a…" The final part of that sentence was abruptly cut off as a roaring noise sounded from somewhere below him.

The metal frame of the bridge shook and rattled, and Sam half-scrambled, half-fell backwards onto the studier platform behind him. From below the bridge, a shape was emerging. It was wormlike, gigantic, almost seeming too swollen to fit inside the narrow waterway that held it. Its skin was black and glossy like oil, and it moved with an almost viscous quality as if it were made of tar. Sam imagined that if he were to touch it, his hand would come away stained with black stickiness.

The roaring finally gave way to the splashing of water as the head of the thing emerged above the parapet, and Sam felt a chill run through him. It had no eyes, nor nose, nor any facial features he could discern save for the rows and rows of teeth that lined the gaping chasm of its mouth. Fear swept over Sam in a wave. A forked tongue flickered out from the depths of the hole between the monster's jaws, and Sam wondered if it was going to lunge for him, but then – mercifully - the entire creature began to descend again. Its squelching mass crawled back into the space from which it had emerged, slithering away with a wet slurping noise as its skin clung to the sewer walls.

Sam shivered. The worm had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, but his relief did nothing to stop the revulsion that ran through his body. If that thing was out there, he was going to have to be careful. Doubly so than before.

Shakily, the hunter picked himself up and shot a glance at the hallucination of Lucifer, standing nonchalant as ever as the far side of the bridge. He swallowed nervously. "What was that?"

Lucifer shrugged. "Leviathan, Sam. In its true form. You knew they were sea serpents, right? Originally, before my father locked them away."

"Wait, _what_?" Sam's already exhausted brain struggled to process that, trying desperately to make sense of things. "You're saying the Leviathan have something to do with all this? They're why I'm here?"

"What do _you_ think, Sam?"

There was a pause, in which Lucifer surveyed Sam calmly and Sam's mind tripped over itself to come up with an explanation. After a beat, he shook his head. "No. I still think this is you. You're fucking with me."

Once again, the fallen angel did nothing but shrug. "Maybe. But I'm still the one you're going to have to listen to if you want to get out of here. Now, do you want to get the power back on and go save your brother or not?"

Sam was about to reluctantly agree when he suddenly froze. Another chill ran down his spine. "So…you admit Dean's in trouble? You said you didn't know what happened to him."

Momentarily, a flicker of annoyance passed over the angel's face, looking as if he'd been caught out. "Well, Sammy, you certainly seem to think so, and I _am_ your subconscious after all."

" _Tell me_ what happened to him, Lucifer." If the command had been directed towards a human being, the anger in Sam's tone would have cowed anyone.

"You're going to have to figure that one out for yourself." Lucifer's words almost seemed like a taunt.

Sam just glared harder for a few moments, breathing heavily, wondering if he should just finally have his outburst and let all the fear and anger and frustration out and scream until the angel told him what had happened to Dean. But when he wasn't sure if he would just be arguing with a figment of his own imagination, he tried to keep his mind in check. "Alright," he snarled after a beat, "I will. And if you aren't going to help me, you can fuck off."

Lucifer looked affronted. "And after everything I did to get you this far. But fine, have it your way." A moment later, he was gone.

Only then did Sam take a deep breath and finally began to stride forward across the bridge, his step even more purposeful and determined than before.


End file.
